How I Got Here

It was 2017, and something was wrong. I was 35, and my life wasn’t coming together. Work was pretty good, but it took up most of my free time. I drank most nights, but didn’t think much of it. Relationships weren’t working out, but I just figured I hadn’t found the right person yet. I had some friends, but I struggled to actually open up.

I thought I just needed to try harder. Get up earlier. Overcome my fears. Stop getting in my own way. Find the right self-help book that would finally show me how to be like everyone else.

I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but I had severe anxiety and alcoholism brought on by PTSD acquired in my mid-20s. Looking back, my struggles make so much sense, but back then I just figured I was to blame, that my inability to get my life together was my own fault.

Nine years later I’m a radically different person. I’m three years sober from alcohol, and feel so little anxiety that for the last year and a half I’ve been working as a group facilitator in maximum security prisons — an environment I would’ve found intolerably stressful for most of my life. I’ve built a great community of people I care deeply for, and am finding new connections on a regular basis. I barely recognize myself, in the best possible way.

I went down a lot of paths during those nine years of figuring things out, many of which didn’t work out or were even actively harmful. I learned so much along the way, both about myself and mental health in general. My goal now is to help others along that path I travelled, but without the dead ends and false starts.

If you’d like to learn even more about my background, here’s a website I built about my career path (opens in a new tab) while job hunting a few years ago. Or for even more career specifics, here’s my LinkedIn profile (opens in a new tab).

These days, in addition to one-on-one work, I lead courses in the Colorado prison system with the Realness Project. I’m a certified Authentic Relating facilitator (opens in a new tab), and have completed trainings in IFS with IFSCA (opens in a new tab) and in Somatic Trauma work with the Somatic Nature Therapy Institute (opens in a new tab).